


I Remember When We Were

by dannihowell (iguessicantry)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Bisexual Male Character, F/M, M/M, Post-Divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 15:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7624282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iguessicantry/pseuds/dannihowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been a few years since the divorce and Dan still can’t cope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Remember When We Were

She’s nice. She always greets me with a smile and a hug. She’ll come on time and call ahead. She is polite and, I guess, just perfect for him. She’s pretty, too pretty. Her name is Samantha but he calls her baby. It’s a hand-me-down pet name. It used to be mine.

She’ll drop off my kids every friday after she’s picked them up from school. Those are the arrangements, an order of custody passed down from a judge. It’s always her who does it too. They call her ‘Mum’ now. Phil won’t come here and I won’t go there. It’s easier to avoid the conflict.

****

We were married for 16 years. The first five were good, really really good. But things changed. But don’t they always? We had gotten older, more stressed out. The economy had dipped and we had children to clothe and feed and bad habits to break. We started fighting, screaming when it got too hard to cope with the pressure. He’d beg me not to in front of the children but I couldn’t stop. I’d yell, “You fucking prick!” and “Just leave!”

****

One day he did. He just up and left. I later found out he had already leased a flat on the other side of town with 2 bedrooms and 1 bathrooms, just big enough for him and the kids. He was prepared to go even before that last fight. I told him, “You are not taking /my/ kids from me.”

He said, “They’re /mine/ and we both know that.” That wasn’t true. It was but only biologically. Legally, my name was on their birth certificates and yes, my daughter had his bright blue eyes and my two sons had that same gingery hair when they were babies like him. They were still mine. We fought over them and we fought over money and we fought over the car. The fucking car we had run off in when we were young and hopeful.

When the weekend is over, she calls and says the car is getting repairs so I have to drive to their house, to his house. I pack up the kids and we drive the hour to get there. I argue with my oldest over Phil’s decision to ground him because he broke curfew. He says, “I knew you would side with him,” and I laugh because it’s one the first things we’ve agreed on since– since signing the divorce papers. I stop laughing.

I park in their driveway, two new cars sit in the garage and I can see the bikes organized on a rack and the space free of clutter. The lawn is cut, the sprinklers are on. It’s late evening so it’s environmentally friendly. Their house has curtains, open on the bottom level and I can see straight inside. He kisses her on the cheek as she puts something on the table and he leaves the room. My kids walk ahead of me and I watch from afar. He opens the door, hugs my youngest, my little girl, Allie. The boys give him their usual half hearted greetings, typical for boys aged 12 and 15. He looks over at me and I fight his glance, looking down at my shoes.

“Hey, Dan” he called.

“Hey, Phil.”

“Would you like to come inside? Sam’s made this–”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Oh. The kids would like it if you stayed.”

“I gotta get back. Sorry,” I lied. I have nothing to return to. No boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse. I’ll return to my own flat, heat up a microwave meal and watch tv, falling asleep to the sound of a strangers voice. It’s better than nothing.

“Okay. Have a good night then.”

“Thanks.”

****

I hop into my car, I turn on the radio and it’s our song. That fucking song from 20 years ago. Not here. Not now. My eyes well up and hot tears leak. My chest tightens because he’s so far away but he’s not. He’s inside eating dinner with them and with her. I rest my head on the steering wheel because holding it up is too much to handle. I need to conserve my strength. I still haven’t left their driveway. The song hits the chorus and I’m bawling. I’m alone and lonely. It hadn’t occurred to me that those two things had widely different meaning until he left. Alone was physical and lonely was an emotion, one I knew too well. I’m falling deeper into this feeling and I am struggling to find a grip. The footholds of this mountain I’m climbing are crumbling under my feet. The sun is rapidly sinking down into the horizon and I’m lost without anyway to see where I’m going. Salty tears burn the cut on my chin for my morning shave.

I hear a knock on my window and look up. It’s Phil and I try to hide my tears. He can’t know what this is doing to me.

****

He opens the door before I can lock it and scream at him to leave me alone.

“I can’t have you crying out here.”

“You never cared before! You just fucking left and moved on, didn’t you? Just fuck off,” I sobbed. He turns the key in the ignition and takes them out.

“I won’t give them back until you come inside.”

“I can’t”

“Then you’ll stay here all night. I thought you had to get back?”

“I lied.”

“Oh.”

The song finally finishes but he doesn’t even hear it. Or maybe he doesn’t acknowledge it. They probably have a song, one that he remembers and one that he plays on their anniversary. Going on four years now, I reckon.

He puts his hand on my back and rubs it to soothe me. I want to recoil from his touch because I’m not used to it anymore. But I want it. God, I want it so badly. He’ll never know.

“Come in?” he asks as if I actually had a choice but instead of saying something snarky, I nod. I step out of the car and follow him inside.

It’s warm and it smells like home, an actual home. The scent of an air freshener mixed with some sort of baked chicken and side dish. I can hear my kids in the other room, the clinking of their forks on their plates and she’s asking them how the weekend went. Jason, my oldest, says, “Dad said I shouldn’t be on punishment.”

The nerve. The absolute nerve. “Did you say that?” Phil asks from behind me in a hushed tone.

“No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“He’s getting worse you know? Sneaking out, lying, partying. I’m afraid I’ll find drugs on him some day.”

“What should we do?”

“Can you talk to him? Sam and I have already tried.”

“He doesn’t listen to me, Phil. Don’t you know that? None of them do. They hate me.”

“No, they don’t.”

“You hate me.”

“I-I never hated you. I just stopped loving you.” He pulls me into another room and flicks the light switch. It’s their office. They actually have an office and it’s clean, books in the shelves and envelopes stacked in a pile in the outbox labeled on the desk. “Dan, do you need to talk to me? You can talk to me. You know that.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then why were you in your car crying?”

“Phil, I-I…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re wasting your time.”

“No, you’re wasting my time. Talk to me.”

“How did we get here? What went wrong?”

“Like you said, I stopped loving you.”

“How the fuck do you go from loving someone to not loving them, Phil? You can’t just turn it on and off.”

“It was years in the making Dan. Every year since that day, it began to dwindle until I couldn’t find it anymore.”

“Don’t you dare use that against me! You knew what I was going through.”

“Wasn’t I going through the same thing? I was! But I didn’t bring other men into our home, into our bed and– I’m not going to argue. I should have never even forgiven you.”

“You had stopped touching me! You were always too tired or too busy or some other bullshit like that.”

“You are going to blame me for your cheating, Dan?”

“You stopped loving me long before I slept with him. I needed someone to hold me and you were never there. He was!”

“Where is he now? Huh? Where is he then? Where Dan?!”

Someone knocks on the door and Phil shouts, “What!”

“Who are you talking to, Phil? What are you shouting?” Sam asks through the door.

He opens the door and she looks at me confusedly. “Oh, Dan. You’re still here.”

“I’m going now,” I say leaving the room, pushing past her and heading straight out the door. Phil follows me and catches me at my car.

“This is your problem. You always run away! I try to talk to you and you always run away!”

“This will be the last time.”

****

I slam my door, turn the key and reverse out of their driveway. I drive away speeding when I know I’m not supposed to. They live in the suburbs in a four bedroom house and the children went to the nursery on the next street over when they were younger. The park that sits next to it was our favorite and I remember going there with him. With our basket of food hanging on Allie’s stroller, a blanket tucked underneath Phil’s arm as he held our boys’ hands because we had to cross the street.

****

I get home, throw the keys into the bowl by the door and settle in for a night of silence, reflection, depression.

I remember the days before everything became too much. Before he stopped talking to me, stopped touching me. Before I treated him like a piece of shit and let our kids watch. But couldn’t he remember? Maybe then he could forgive me, actually forgive me. Doesn’t he remember why he fell in love with me in the first place? How could he though. I don’t remember myself.

The clock ticks to midnight and the city lights are blinding in this part of the city. The disgusting yellow lights peering through my window and the curtains aren’t accurately measured so they don’t close completely. The fridge is empty so nothing to snack on for distraction. My phone beeps because the battery is 3% and I don’t care. Paper plates stick out of the trash bin from the breakfast they ate that morning and there’s a strange smell coming from the washroom. I figure I’ll deal with it now instead of later. I can’t sleep anyway.

My bottle of sleeping pills rests on the back of the toilet and–it just lures me in. I want to forget. I want to sleep. I want so much more than this and nothing at all for just a few hours. I take the pills into the kitchen so I can take them with some water, take out my phone and text Phil: I love you and I am sorry about everything.

He doesn’t reply of course. He has work tomorrow and so does his wife so they put their phones on silent as to not be disturbed. That what he told me when I called one night, feeling the same way. He had asked me why I called and I told him it was an accident. I turn the cap on the bottle and it just won’t lift. I struggle to get past the childproof lock and throw it across the room in frustration. It bursts open and they all fall out. I pick up a handful, bring them to my lips and swallow. I take a sip of water and go back to bed.

****

————–

Phil wakes up next to Sam and reaches over her to check his phone for messages. There’s one text from Dan, sent at 1:13 am. He texts back: I love you too.

He calls Dan that morning on his way to work and he doesn’t pick up. He leaves a message asking if he could come over or maybe they could grab a coffee, joking about staying in public is probably best.

He doesn’t hear from Dan in four days and neither does Sam. Friday comes and Phil elects to take the kids over to him, as per the agreement of joint custody. He gets to Dan’s lobby and sees the ambulance parked outside and doesn’t think twice. Allie presses the up button to call the lift but the doors open. It’s the paramedics pushing a stretcher. Phil looks over to see who the person is but he can’t see their face, the body bag is zipped up. “Oh no. What happened?”

“Poor guy overdosed on sleeping pills. He’s been all alone up there for a least a few days now.”

“No one knew?”

“No. He died alone.”

“That’s so sad. I wonder if Dan knew him.”

“Dan? Dan Howell?”

“Yes. That’s who we’re here to see.”

“I’m sorry to tell you this but this is Dan Howell.”

“No,” he says shaking his head.

“Is that… Dad?” Alex, their middle child, asks.

“I’m so sorry,” the young female paramedic says.

Phil brings the kids close and hugs them as they watch as their father is taken into the ambulance knowing they'd never forget it.

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr  
> [dannihowell](https://danni-howell.tumblr.com/)


End file.
